Cabin in the Woods
by Ezra Cross
Summary: Skye has been banished to that lonely cabin so that she can learn to control her powers (and to protect the populace if she cant). But what happens when her little bit of boring solitude is invaded by an injured, smart talking, Hawkeye? And then the Hulk appears? Skye must learn the power of control or face being the world's greatest outcast for accidentally murdering an Avenger.
1. Chapter 1

I don't always write Agents of Shield, but when I do, it's because I stuck an injured Hawkeye in it :)

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I wrote this little surprise after the recent episode: "One Door Closes". the ONLY reason that association exists is because Hulk punched a wall... literally, All i saw was that cute little moment, and this entire thing was born.

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This is a surprise for my editors! (because they see so much of my work beforehand, they deserve a little excitement of their own now and again, so please excuse some grammar mistakes. That is the only reason!)

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**Cabin in the Woods**

**Part 1**

Clint Barton sighed as he saw the edge of the cabin finally come into view. He felt like he'd walked for the last four straight miles into the middle of nowhere. SHIELD bolt holes might be few and far between since HYDRA came to light, but he still had those old hideaways that even the cleverest agents forgot existed. Being able to enjoy this particular piece of solitude in the midst of the Canadian wilderness was a Godsend. The woods hadn't been the kindest to him in the last seventy-two hours. Having the opportunity to kick off his boots, prop his feet in front of a fire, and sleep the night away in relative comfort was all he cared about now.

The old holly and spruce trees bent in the cool wind that followed him down the mountain side and tumbled over the canopy. It brought a growing frost on its edge, like a snow threatening to fall but not quite ready to make that leap into full blown winter. During the sunlit hours, the heat could sometimes feel oppressive in the close grown copse of trees, but as night began to close in the true state of fall made itself known. He was lucky for the warmth, even if it beat through his leather jacket and threatened to roast him from the inside out.

Mounting the short steps to the old wood lined cabin, he transferred the few brown bags from one hand to the other and fished around for a key in the arrow heads trapped in his pocket lining. He felt fortunate for thinking to bring it along since Coulson hated when he resorted to breaking the door in. After he tried the door handle once, he inserted the key and popping the lock free. A click and a whirl from the door's inner mechanics ground in sequence. After a time they spun a small data pad in his direction. Clint typed in his combo code, punched enter, and finally the door's pop seal sprang inward. He slipped the key back into his pocket and pushed his way inside. Half a foot in, he stopped.

There was an empty bowl on the counter resting next to a spoon. The refrigerator door was half open, its internal light casting a shadow on the person standing next to it with a bottle of milk in her hands. Her jaw slacked as she saw him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Cabin in the Woods**

**Part 2  
**

Skye stared at the flickering light of the fire. Temporarily proud over her ability to not only light, but operate the complicated flue system after nearly choking to death a mere two times.

Skye stared at the empty cup cabinet, wondering how long she had to ration her cocoa puffs before she became desperate and broke into the Trix.

Skye stared at the distant lake peeking through the haze of the electric fence. Maybe she'd trust herself to go on the other side and attempt to fish.

Skye stared at the blank computer screen. She ran out of things to do on the internet, and learning that her "Spirit Animal" according to Buzzfeed amounted to a rather demure looking squid only deepened her propensity for melancholy.

Skye attempted to set up a Netflix account, only to discover Canadian Netflix was subpar to its English counterpart and therefore useless to watch re-runs of Greys Anatomy or Lost.

Skye was, in few short terms, bored beyond all reasonable sense. She'd used the computer chair to circle the room forty-five times and tried to crust chicken with Captain Crunch. She decided to take up bird watching and gave up when a pigeon christened her shoulder. It had been three weeks since Coulson first dropped her off in the Canadian wilderness and still Skye had yet to find that peace she was looking for. The one that told her these powers she'd been given weren't going to get out of control or be directed toward the harm of others she actually cared about. She wanted to stop hurting herself and give her micro fractures a chance to heal. However, every time she woke they only seemed to be getting worse. How did anyone expect her to control herself in her sleep?

More and more the fall retreat to the cabin in the woods felt less like a chance to find her inner soul and more like losing her sanity altogether. Coulson hadn't dropped by himself in over a week. May said she'd be that next morning. Fighting the inner chaos was one thing, realizing that she was simply lonely seemed to make her attempts at control fall on deaf ears altogether.

She had just decided to fix herself a bowl of something for her late noon snack when the sound of a key in the door handle surprised her. Maybe Coulson had decided to drop by after all. Skye tried to come up with a witty retort on the fly to fling at the man, but when the door swung inward, her jaw dropped.

Clint froze and blinked. "Um, hi." He said in surprise.

"Who are you?!" She demanded, dropping the milk carton on the floor and backing toward the wall. She made no move to close the refrigerator door. What was a random guy doing out in the middle of the woods? How had he scaled the electric fence, punched in the door code, and let alone even find the place without getting shot by one of the drones along the way?

Clint shrugged. He never expected to find someone else bedding down in the old cabin, but it really didn't matter to him. He only planned to stay until the next afternoon when his evac arrived. Ignoring her discomfort, he strode right inside and dropped his paper bags on the counter top. Nonchalantly he leaned down, picked up the half spilled milk, and returned it to the fridge shelf.

"You can't be here! I'm not supposed to—How did you even get here? Did—" she stammered out, trying to find words past her shock at seeing another living soul. She was dangerous. She could kill people. The only reason she was at the cabin at all was to keep others safe from her uncontrollable new powers. Through her sputtering, she finally came to a realization. "Who are you?!"

"Hawkeye." Clint affirmed. He went to his bags and began extricating some of the contents.

Where had she heard that name before? Skye tried to force her mind to focus on the task at hand without making the entire room shake. When it hit her, she gasped. "Wait a minute, I recognize you. You're an Avenger, right?"

He snickered some to himself, extracting a case of Millers and sitting it on the counter. He leaned back on the kitchen table and finally spared her a glance. "You know, Tony kinda said that off the cuff to look cool in front of Loki. He's the one who made it stick. That and Cap, I guess, didn't make a big enough argument for Freedom Force."

She remained clear on the other side of the room by the old landline computer Coulson once installed ten years ago and refused to upgrade since. Skye was glad that she'd decided to put on her supposedly power-deactivating gloves that morning. Without thinking about it, she crossed her arms, tugging at them a few times. Even upright she seemed to ball up into herself. Telling her he was an Avenger did very little to improve her physical state of comfort at his presence.

Clint's mouth flipped up in a grin. "I'm not fixing that wall before Coulson comes back."

Skye did not expect that comment out of the famous hero. She looked to where he indicated. It was a fist-shaped depression in the vibranium studded interior walls. The metal was overlaid in normal wood paneling, giving the cabin a rustic feel without showing the nature of its true calling, keeping the beasts contained inside the cage.

She glanced at it a little guilty. "Did you do that?" She asked, indicating the colossal fist imprint.

Clint snorted, shaking his head. "You must have me mixed up with a ten foot green gorilla with a bad attitude and worse breath. No. That was all Hulk." He reached into his case of beers and extracted two. Opening the fridge again, he set them inside on the shelf and let the weight of the door close itself. He next opened the top cupboard and peered at the cobwebs inside. Skye already knew there wasn't much left. May planned to bring her the next shipment of supplies when she arrived tomorrow. Having no success finding whatever it is he wanted in the first cabinet, he moved to the second, then dropped to the lower cabinets and even debated checking the dishwasher.

"What're you looking for?" she asked.

"Coke. One can. I always keep six of them, I just want one." He stopped. In horror he spun around and glared at her. The wash of shame and terror came back into her expression. "Awe, come on! Didn't Coulson tell you not to drink them?!"

She threw her hands into the air. "Look, I don't even know how you got in here past the laser fence, ok. No one is supposed to be out here with me. That's the whole reason I'm out here at all! I'm dangerous!"

"I helped erect the fence. I disabled it to get in. Steve spent time up here too. Coulson did his food shopping and kept him out of trouble." Clint leaned against the counter and rubbed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes. "The one thing I was looking forward to. Figures. Knew I should have just bought them."

"Did you not hear me?" Skye asked, taking another cautionary step back. She could feel the heat from the fire she'd stoked warming the back of her jeans. "I'm dangerous. You. Must. Leave. I don't want to hurt you."

"Oh gimme a break. I work with the Hulk." Clint replied, unperturbed.

"I'm not the—"

"I don't care." He cut her off. His ice blue eyes sailed across the room and honed in on her like a vampire might draw in his prey. "Look, girl. I just hiked twenty-three miles since last night. I smell like arm pits and nitroglycerine and I just barely escaped where I was with my life. The Hulk is running around out there right now and he'll be here by nightfall at the latest so," Clint opened his hands and let them fall. "You're just gonna have to deal with whatever little issue you've got going on because I'm not leaving."

"But—"

"Besides," Clint drew out one of the warm beers, hooked the edge of the lid on his ring, and popped the cap off. "This was my bolt-hole way before it was yours." He held out the open bottle for her to take.

Skye analyzed the offering for a moment without decided to move closer. Sure she never expected to be sharing this place with anyone else, but Hawkeye was an Avenger. A real life, in the flesh, save the entire planet style Avenger. If he wanted something, he literally outranked every single command she'd ever been given. Then again, he also had a point. He worked with Bruce Banner, the Hulk himself, every single day. If anyone could handle being around her and her unpredictable powers it was an Avenger's class superhero. She decided to take him up on the offer. What other option did she have? Asking him to leave sure didn't work.

"What, I get the warm one and you save the cold ones for yourself?" She asked, trying to lighten the air.

He grinned then added the open beer to the two others already chilling. "Name's Clint Barton. Ex-agent for SHIELD. I've been working the Avenger's detail since New York. I'm allergic to blueberries. No, I do not share a room with Banner. Yes, Thor does snore and no one can stand it. Yes, Captain America does have American flag boxers." He folded his arms. "I bought them for him as a gag."

Skye tried to match his smile with her own. "I'm Skye, newer Agent for SHIELD, working under Coulson."

"Ok, fine. You know me, I know you. Does that make you feel less awkward?" He asked.

"Don't you want to know why I'm here?"

To her utter amazement, Clint said, "No." and completely changed the topic. "You said newer agent. Who's your FTO? Is Coulson still doing that?"

"Melinda May."

Clint laughed. "Cookies? That's rich. Thought she gave up Field Training after the last girl broke her tibia."

"Cookies?" Skye asked.

"Old joke. Don't tell her I called her that. Actually go ahead and tell her, and tell all her friends. In fact, I grant you the powers to call her that too. Do people still say she's the Calvary?" Clint grabbed his paper grocery bags and folded them up along their seams before stashing them between the trashcan and the wall. Skye had seen six others there before when Coulson first brought her by. She wondered who they were from at first, now it seemed to make sense.

"She doesn't like it but, yeah, people say that about her." Skye admitted.

"Yeah, well, I started that one too. It wasn't her fault, but it kinda was. That's what you get for riding to my infrequent rescue. First time not having an exit strategy didn't pan out for me. This guy goes and takes me, my mark, and the fifteen other SHIELD agents that I had as back up in. Melinda was on our ER calls that night and she was the first one available to respond when my mission went belly up. She dropped a quinjet on the place. She's such a hard case when she wants to be." Finishing with the bags, he crossed the room, yanking off his leather jacket as he went. Skye could hardly believe how comfortable he was in the place. It was like watching the owner of a home come back and find the house-sitter had cleaned him out. He set his jacket on the back of the computer chair.

"You're the one that started the Cavalry?" Skye exclaimed.

He shrugged. "I call Cap Admiral Flag behind his back. Somethings just stick."

Skye backed away as Clint came closer to her. He pulled out the single leather chair and rearranged the room to have it centered between the coffee table and the fire. He plopped down onto the cushion and one-by-one extracted his feet from his hard soled boots. Skye was fortunate she'd backed up so soon. The sheer musk of man coming off of him was enough to fell a water buffalo.

"You weren't kidding about needing a shower." She whispered, mildly repulsed.

"I said I smelled like armpits. I didn't say I needed a shower. Which I do. But right now, I want to sleep. I'm tired, I'm cold, and I really want caffeine. But first and foremost, I'm tired. You try fighting forty-five frog men over fifteen square miles, uphill, on a mountain, in the woods and tell me how you feel afterwards." Clint kicked his boots away and hiked his sweaty, white socks onto the edge of the table, adding yet another upsurge of scent to the already gathering brown cloud. Skye swallowed and forced her arm to cover her nose.

"Do me a favor and wake me when Banner shows up. Tell him I've only had one morphine pen."

Skye shook her head. "Wait, what?! I thought you said it was the Hulk."

Clint scrunched down in the old leather couch until he was balled up against one of the armrests. "When he gets here, he will be. Don't worry, he can't get through the door till he turns back."

"Are you serious?" Skye exclaimed. Somewhere in the distance a _ROAR_! split the air, tearing her attention away from the Avenger. It resonated like the sound Steven Spielberg gave to the T-rex in Jurassic Park.

"That'd be him." Clint said, yawning as he sank down a little more. His eyes slid closed and he tucked in against the armrest. "One dose. Remember that." He whispered.

Before Skye could protest and shake him back to consciousness, Clint had slipped right into his cat nap. Another shout from the rampaging Hulk hurled through the woodland. She tried to swallow her fears as the room around them began to quake.

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No offense intended toward Canadians. I live in a little island country and our netflix is SERIOUSLY different than the USA :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Cabin in the Woods**

**Part 3**

Skye hovered her fingers over the computer keys and tried to decide if she was going to place that call for Coulson and May, or if she planned to remain mum. She wasn't at all happy to share her personal space with the Avenger currently passed out on the chair. She knew Coulson and he were good friends from their SHIELD days together. Coulson rarely spoke of the Avenger now. Skye could tell there was a deep history seated under that tough sin. He was equal ways proud as a new father and terrified as that same father handing the keys to Lola to a new driver. She couldn't answer how the Avengers even knew Phil was alive in the first place. It was one of the greatest kept secrets from that superhero team.

"Phil would want to know he's here." Skye told herself, leaning in to press send on the base transmitter. Before depressing the enter key, the same hand retracted again. "But he'll probably be scared to death that I might accidentally kill him, and come running in guns blazing." Her bottom lip scrunched up under her nose and her eyes began to squint as she watched the SHIELD logo twirling on the screensaver.

The rampaging Hulk had gone disturbingly quiet after his thundering feet launched him right over the electric fence and outside of the cabin walls. The entire room threatened to shake apart under Skye's mounting terror. Then the Hulk arrived. He tested the walls first. Some sort of muscle memory kept him from actually trying to break in. He did find the window and the massive green face dropped down outside of it so his eye could peer in. The growl that rumbled through his throat shook the pane of glass. Skye would never forget the shock she felt when the gamma green monster actually articulated a normal word.

"Hawkeye." He growled. After that, he moved away and the world outside became quiet again.

Skye tried to shake off the second slam of fear which erupted in her chest. If she didn't call Coulson about Hawkeye, she should definitely call him about the Hulk. She wasn't stable herself as it was, what would she possibly do with someone as volatile as Bruce Banner hanging around? What if he decided to Hulk out inside the cabin and she was trapped inside? What if she got nervous and tried to earthquake him right into a wall?

"Calling Coulson. That's it. I'm giving him a call." She decided. She hit a few keys on the keyboard and banished away the screensaver. The dedicated line was already keyed up and ready to go when a knock on the door interrupted her. Skye froze and pulled her hands away again.

"Clint, you left the door locked!" an unfamiliar voice called from the other side of the door. The person knocked again, louder.

_Bruce Banner_, she said to herself. Leaving the computer in suspended animation, she pushed away from the table and slowly approached the front door. Bruce was a scientist like Fitz and Simmons. Maybe if she explained things to him, he'd manage to find a way to get Clint out of there. She spent ten minutes trying to wake Hawkeye up, to no avail. The guy slept like the dead. Bruce would understand.

Before he knocked a third time, Skye opened the front door and stood in the wedge preventing his entry. Seeing the damage he'd caused being trapped in the Vibranium lined cabin before, made her elect that him being inside was a terrible decision.

"Thanks for leaving me in the old—" Bruce stopped midway. He stepped back a little. His eyes drifted around the cabin sides and then eventually returned back to the girl he never expected to see. "Uh. . . Tony Stark isn't in there, is he?"

Skye screwed her face back. "No! Why? Wait a minute, he isn't coming too, is he?"

"No, not that I know of." He looked around again. "Um. Clint Barton?"

Skye hiked her thumb backward. "Inside. Passed out in a chair. Whole place smells like sweat and feet. I wouldn't recommend entering if you value your life."

Bruce nodded. Finding nothing out of place on the outside he peered a little inside. The most he could see was the computer chair pushed up beside the kitchen table. Clint's jacket was draped on the back of it. His eyes returned to the girl and made a swift assessment of her. His voice altered from confusion to a physician-like tone, calm, drawn out, enunciating every syllable, and he kept his hands clasped in front of him where she could see them. "I think maybe we should start this again. My name is Bruce Banner. I feel like you probably met the other guy?"

Skye swallowed, stiffened, and nodded her head a little. "He was terrifying." She admitted cuttingly.

"I'm sorry if he was rude." Bruce continued in the same calm, passive tone. "He doesn't have the best manners. I'm sorry if he scared you. I'm thinking that Agent Coulson—"

"Director." She corrected with more anger in her voice than she expected.

His eyebrows crested. "Director? That's good for him. He's a good man from what Clint's always told me. Tony liked him, and that isn't common. Anyway, I'm Bruce. What's your name?"

Skye looked up and down him again, as if trying to decide where exactly the doctor ended and the Hulk started. She also couldn't seem to understand how he'd found clothes in the middle of the woods. "Skye." She eventually said.

"Hello, Skye. Director Coulson brought you out here?"

Her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. "Ye-yeah."

"That was very good of him. That means he cares for you very much. And he trusts you. Not many people know about this place. Honestly I've never seen someone else but us out here. If Coulson liked you enough to bring you here that says to me that I can trust you. It also tells me you are having some trouble. I can see the bruises on your arms—"

Skye retracted her hand against her chest and pulled her gloves down a little to hide the obvious marks.

Bruce held up his hand in supplication. "Sorry. I do that sometimes. I didn't mean to embarrass you. Now, I can see you're a little worried about having me around and I can understand that. I have a handle on this," He indicated himself by laying a hand on the cotton knit fabric over his chest. "And I can promise you, there is nothing that you can do that will cause anything bad to happen with me. If Phil brought you here, it means he trusts you to take care of you. There are a lot of worse places he could have brought you if that wasn't the case. I should know. I spent time at most of them."

Skye let her hands fall down from where they hugged at her chest. Her foot angled away from the bottom of the door where she used it as a doorstop. This was not what she expected in the doctor at all. She heard stories of Dr. Banner, mainly from Fitz and Simmons. Genius, Mensa, Nobel Prize, none of those labels came close to identifying the full depth of his intelligence levels. He was one of the most brilliant researchers the world had ever seen, even after the accident which turned him into the raging green monster. Seeing him like this, and appreciably more adjusted for normal human conversation that either of the science twins Skye knew, off guarded her.

Bruce smiled. "Skye, is it all right if I ask you something? Did Clint tell you anything that I should know?"

She'd almost forgotten that. "Oh, yeah. He said one dose, or one pen. I think he said morphine."

His expression formed an O with his mouth. "I see. That's pretty big stuff for him to take. Skye, was he walking when he came in?"

"Yeah. He dropped his groceries on the counter and waltzed around like he owned the place." She replied, her guard dropping more and more.

"Well, funny story, he actually dose. Can I ask you if he was bleeding? Limping?"

This wasn't a turn she expected. At first she thought Hawkeye crossed a line when he let himself right in and took over the place. Knowing that he might be the owner changed those feelings to embarrassment instead. "Um, no. Not that I know of."

Bruce continued to keep his voice level, calm, and completely relaxed. After the first few minutes, Skye felt as if they'd known each other for years. "Skye, the reason I'm asking you these things is because Hawkeye and I were just in a rather massive battle about twenty miles from here on the other side of the mountain. You might not have been able to hear all of the explosions, but they were impressive. If Clint took a dose of morphine, it is because he probably didn't make it out of that fight unscathed. If it's ok with you, I would like to come inside and look at him. You said he's asleep. Is he actually unconscious?"

Skye pulled the door open wider for him to fit inside. She'd originally been so concerned with the fact that the Hulk had surrounded her bunker, but now speaking with Bruce it was nice to just have a normal conversation. She knew when Barton first said he'd taken morphine that it didn't make sense to her but she never gave herself the chance to question it. What if he was actually bleeding to death the entire time, and she just spent the hour trying to decide whether to call Phil or not? What if an Avenger died on her chair just because she couldn't make up her mind enough to call for a medical evac?

"I don't know. I didn't even think to check. He didn't say anything!"

Bruce briskly strolled in, but he never lost the gentle tempo of his voice. "That's ok, Skye." He said.

"Is he bad? Is he going to die?"

Bruce knelt down beside Clint's folded up body and extracted one of his hands. He searched around for a pulse. It was mainly for the strength of it, rather than assessing whether Clint was dead or not. He could already tell the archer was breathing. "To be honest, if Hawkeye didn't come back from a mission without a scratch, then all of us have this ritual where we get him a cake." He glanced at Skye and smiled again. "Hey, look. There is a med kit in the bathroom, on the right hand side in a secret compartment along the wall. You might need to search for it, but I think you can find it. Can you get it for me?"

Skye had no idea how many hiding places the old cabin had. She'd already found two. One with the boxes of cereal in it and the second had a remote controller but what it belonged to, she hadn't discovered just yet. During one such journey, she unearthed the Hulk-fist imprint in the wall. Finding something in the bathroom never occurred to her at first.

She walked into the little one-stall, sink, toilet, shower room and leaned down to probe along the wall where Bruce indicated. Despite her fears about him being around, she actually liked the guy. He had a tendency to repeat her name, which seemed sort of weird at first, but the more he said it, the calmer she felt. Like every word was meant just for her. Besides, Bruce had been working on the Avengers team for over two years. If Tony Stark trusted him to stay at Avengers Tower, he must be doing something right. And guys like that dealt with people like her every day. Maybe this wasn't the worst idea in the world after all.

This hiding place was harder to find than the others. A spring lock was embedded between the edge of the sink plumbing and a false tile. After flicking it to the side, the tile sprung outward, forcing her to twirl it to the left a few times before the second lock disengaged and the entire hidden wall cabinet sprung free. She pulled the false door away and peered at the bag inside. Jackpot.

When she walked back into the main room again, Clint was awake. He'd dropped his feet off the coffee table and sat up, trying to unzip his leather vest. He smiled at her.

"Hey, Quaker Oats." He asked.

"What?" Skye shot in surprise.

He snickered. "Awe, come on. It's a joke. Just set the bag on the table. Besides, if you think I can sleep hard enough to not notice a 6.0 earthquake, you're crazy."

Skye stepped forward and dropped the bag in front of him. He was good. She'd even resorted to poking him in the leg with a fork to wake him up and the guy never moved.

Bruce batted Clint's hands away from the vest and unzipped it himself. "Ignore my friend, Skye. He's a jerk, but he has a kind heart. On Tuesdays. After he's had his coffee."

"Bruce lies. I'm nice on Wednesdays." Clint said, still smiling.

"And his endless sarcasm waxes so thin that you may want to slap him." Bruce finished unzipping the vest and stood to help Clint work it off. "So, if you can't stand listening to him, I give you free reign _to_ slap him."

Joking ended the minute Bruce went to pull off the outer vest. Clint's face paled. He inhaled sharply and released the breath in a harsh grunt. Bruce stopped pulling and his still-calm face looked up at Skye. "Do you mind giving me a hand?"

Skye came forward instantly. Bruce indicated the right side of Barton's leather vest and with Bruce taking the left, they simultaneously worked to remove it. Once it was off, Bruce handed it to Skye and analyzed the black tank top Clint wore beneath. The girl held the filthy vest up and noted the four long claw marks that sliced through it like razor sharp talons. The black and maroon hid most of the staining, but she could feel the weight of clotted blood trapped in the fabric. She looked back down at Clint.

"How much do you like this shirt?" Bruce asked him.

Clint's eyes were closed. His entire face was taught. Skye looked at Bruce, but he remained the same impassive force as before. He waited patiently for Clint to find his center again. He opened his eyes and nodded once. The snark returned to his voice almost instantly.

"I like this shirt. Pepper gave it to me when you cut off my last one."

"Well, she's going to have to give you a new one." Bruce replied. "Unless you feel like getting out your sewing kit and patching up the holes."

"Is my vest ok?"

Bruce held out a hand for it and Skye gave it up. He set it on Clint's lap to consider.

"At least it's just the back panel. I can fix that." He whispered, running his fingers over the shredded fabric.

"Say goodbye to your shirt."

Clint groaned. "Fine. Whatever. Ruin another one of my treasured possessions."

Bruce snickered. He picked up the vest again and set it on the end of the table then rooted around in the medical bag to find his bandage scissors. While he worked to deconstruct Clint's tank-top he returned his attention to Skye. "Can you do Clint a favor and start the shower? The water takes a while to warm up, but I think you know that."

She did. It took her an hour to shower that morning because the heat refused to kick on.

"Does my odor offend you?" Clint asked.

"Yes, in fact it does."

"You aren't any better." Clint remarked.

"I know. But I'm more hungry than sweaty. Besides, I need these wounds cleaned and the best way to do that is just to stick you right in the shower. I found the duffle we stashed with your spare clothes in it so you go strip and I'll lay out the spare stuff when you're done."

Skye stood back and watched the two Avengers work. She'd never seen anything like it before. Sure her team was close. She'd gotten used to the private conversations, the idiosyncrasies, and even knew the hiding place of Fitz's stuffed bears. Seeing that same sort of deep connection in a pair of Avengers made her do a double take.

The Avengers themselves often felt for more like a distant concept, an imaginary creation, than actual living, breathing human beings (and Asgardians). She knew relatively little about their real lives beside the crazy missions they'd been a part of. SHIELD and the team hardly crossed paths at all, especially after HYDRA came out of the darkness. Standing in the cabin now, with two of the most famous people on the planet across from her released a delayed sense of fan-girl in her. This was the REAL Hulk, the REAL Hawkeye, and they were RIGHT THERE.

"Yo, Quaker Oats? Stop shaking the room. Bruce is having a hard enough time with me moving." Clint snapped her out of the excitement nearly as quickly as she fell into it. Skye shook her hands to try and find her center again.

"Sorry. I just realized how cool this kind of is."

"Glad you're enjoying yourself. Now can you turn on the shower?"

"Oh my God," she exclaimed, turning to rush down the hall. She could hear Clint laughing behind her as the thin interior walls failed to block out his joviality. These Avengers were definitely not what she had pictured. Superheroes with zero personality, bad tempers, and Agent Ward style tenacity? Yes. Sarcastic, caring, sweaty man bodies? Not at all. She twisted the knobs on the shower until the hot water side was going full blast. If this really was Clint's cabin, maybe she would get on him about updating the plumbing once every century.

She heard footsteps cruising concurrently up the hall. Clint and Bruce both arrived together, one supporting the other, and slowly angled their way into the tight caddy-corner space. Skye closed the hidden closet with her foot to give them more room and squeezed up against the banister and the mirror. Bruce knocked the toilet lid closed and situated Clint on top of it. The medical bag was hanging by its strap over his free shoulder, and he let it down so he could hand it to Skye.

"His shirt's stuck to the blood on his back, so I'm going to try and soak some gauze and get it off." Bruce explained. He searched around in the bag as she held it open for him, found what he was looking for, and set the rest of the bag down on the sink. He handed her the stack of white squares. "You mind?"

"Oh, me? I'm not any good at this stuff." She replied dubiously. In fact, if she had the space to simply run out now, she would have.

"I know. Whenever he asks me to soak dishrags, I gotta just make Thor do it. I simply can't handle the whole water and towel thing." Clint said. Bruce back-handed the side of Barton's face but it did little to deter his sarcasm.

Determined to not be the useless one in the room, Skye accepted the stack and tested the shower water. It still felt colder than glacial ice. Maybe it would do something for his sharp wit. With the pile soaked, she handed them over to Bruce. Their eyes connected the second he felt the extreme temperature and he shared a private smile with her.

"All right, Clint. You took the morphine when exactly?" Bruce asked, plucking the squares apart one at a time.

"Three-thirty five-IVE! Crap, Bruce! That's cold!"

Skye brought a hand up to her mouth to restrain the laughing fit but Bruce held no such reservations.

"I told you to install a water heater. Tony said he'd pitch in for it too. What did you tell us again?" Bruce removed a second square and Clint jumped when the icey chill met the black fabric adhered to his wounds.

"I said I was ok with it!" Clint growled between clamped jaws.

Bruce paused, his eyes rolling in his skull as he thought about it. "Oh. Yeah. I guess we should get on that then."

Skye watched as the doctor worked. Her claustrophobia slowly subsiding in the rhythmic motion of what they were doing. As his stack of gauze wound down, she'd retrieve some more, soak them down, and hand them over. The large patch of cut up shirt began to darken with its laden moisture content. When it seemed to be good enough, Bruce set the rest of the stack aside and straightened his arched back. The room resounded with the pops of his vertebrae.

He extended a hand to Skye. "Gloves please. Should be a Ziploc bag of them."

She pulled them out and with his direction, handed him two. Bruce dried his hands on his shirt and slipped them into the blue latex.

"Ok Skye, you might want to move a little this way," Bruce lifted the medical bag and set it on the floor so she could go around it. Clint turned his body away from them so his knees faced the shower and his back faced the door where Bruce crouched down. Skye stood over him. She could sense the entire mood in the room change again. Instead of the sarcastic laughter that floated between them, both men fell into a stark seriousness. It was like a switch flicked between them that she wasn't part of.

"That's good, there. Skye, I want you to place both of your hands on Clint's shoulders, like this. That's right. And I need you to sort of push him that way toward the shower. That's right. Good! See, you can do this. Clint, you should be edging off of that dose you took so I'm not sure how this is going to feel, but prepare for the worst. I'm going to go slow at first but if it really starts to hurt, I'm just ripping it off like a bandaid. Are we good?"

From where she stood over him, Skye could just make out his profile. His facial muscles pulled tight as he got ready for whatever was about to happen to him. She knew what was hiding under that fabric, four long strips of torn flesh. A shirt got stuck to her sunburn once during a hot summer beach vacation. She screamed in her bedroom while peeling it off in embarrassment. If this was anything like that, she definitely didn't envy Clint.

"We're good." Barton said.

Bruce worked the edges of one corner first, slowly picking it up like a second skin and peeling it away from the actual flesh beneath. He made it one quarter way down the first stripe when Clint tried to arch his back sharply in pain. The archer met the resistance of Skye's hand and leaned over instead. His hand grabbed the wall-mounted toilet roll holder. Starting with his finger, Clint began to flex every muscle of his arms. One by one, the tensions worked into them until Skye's hand were force to lift under the ripple of his shoulder muscles tightening together like a vice.

"Hang with me, Clint." Bruce whispered as he patiently worked.

At first, Clint said nothing. Skye preferred that. It allowed her a chance to lose herself again in thought. It wasn't every day she met the Avengers (actually it was never) and not everyone the Avengers worked with got to physically touch them (unlike her currently) and whereas once she might have never given that stoic archer a second thought with the likes of Captain America and Thor to talk about, now it was all her brain could zero in on. He probably owned the most muscular shoulders she'd ever seen on a man that wasn't from Asgard. His vocation as an archer gave him that. Even his veins seemed like there wasn't enough room to stay contained. If Skye ever decided to take a course in anatomy, he'd be the one she'd decide to study.

But then Clint pushed back against her. His hand nearly pulled the toilet paper holder right off the wall and he sharply inhaled with a hiss. Skye snapped out of her apparently lonely introspection to try and keep him still.

"I'm sorry. Your skin's shredded and everything's stuck together." Bruce explained. He reached between Clint and Skye to grab the gauze pads and tried to work the moisture between the flaps of hanging flesh. Skye found herself watching even though it made her stomach squirm.

Clint let go of the wall before he really did end up breaking something. He moved his hands down between his knees and tried clasping them together. This time when he jumped, Skye felt the tension hit him first. He grunted, trying to restrain himself from shouting what he really wanted to say.

"I'm sorry." Bruce repeated. He started working a little faster. "It's not coming easy."

"Just pull it off." Clint whispered. Skye could sense the emotion in him that he was trying desperately not to show. Perspiration seeped from the back of his neck and he dropped his head into his palms.

"It's almost there." Bruce lied.

Skye wasn't sure what she should do. Part of her wanted to reassure the obviously agonized archer, but the other part didn't want to interrupt them. Obviously this was a dance they'd done more times than she'd care to know. They had their own history which she'd never be a part of and trying to interject now might only break whatever chemistry Clint was using to not scream. Bruce set the gauze down again, pulled the scissors out of his pocket, and cut off the strip of fabric he'd been working so hard to remove. Half of the wounds were exposed now, and the result was not pretty.

"Clint you're going to need stitches in this one. Fourteen days no swimming, heavy exercise, and I should probably say no archery work if I thought you'd listen." Bruce said. Clint didn't respond. He kept his forehead pressed into his palm. Some of him had begun to shake.

Skye felt Bruce tap the side of her leg. She looked down and he pointed to her with the scissors, then to Clint's back. _Talk to him,_ the Avenger mouthed.

Skye wanted to ask him about what, but Bruce quickly returned to picking at the adhered fabric again. He started on the opposite corner now and began to lift, pull, and cut his way to the middle. Inwardly Skye reeled for something to say. Clint jumped again. This time hard enough she couldn't stop him. He cried out.

"Ok!" Skye said, forcing him back over. Bruce put a hand up along his friend's spine trying to keep him calm. "Ok, ok, it's gonna be ok. I think I said Ok like twenty times now. Sorry. Um. Coulson. Did Coulson ever tell you where he got Lola?"

Bruce tapped her leg again and gave her a thumbs up. Good call.

Clint didn't answer so she went on. "It was his father's car. He loved that thing. He made Phil wake up early and work on it, or had it waiting for him after school. He worked on it during the weekends. He grew to hate that stupid car, but eventually he kinda got over it or something. He said I was like Lola. I didn't know how to feel at first when he compared me to his flying hover car, but I guess it's his way of complimenting people."

Clint pulled another gasp of air through his teeth but this time he didn't try to squirm away. Bruce encouraged her to keep talking.

"My first FTO turned out to be a HYDRA agent. He's mildly, well majorly, obsessed with me. I can't decide if he really just wants to have sex with me or he wants to make me his slave. Either way it's a daily dose of enjoyment for me to mentally imagine putting his head through a wall." Barton almost laughed at that, but it ended in a grimace. "Coulson did an Older Yeller with me. Dropped me off in the woods because he thinks I might accidentally kill some people. I don't blame him, I guess. My dad lured me to this old alien city after going all creepy-fied and I walked away with earthquake powers. Now I get cool gloves that are too tight and itch, a team that doesn't trust me, and why am I saying all of this out loud?"

"OW!" Clint cried, snapping upright as Bruce, reaching the edge of what he thought Barton could manage made the executive decision to rip the rest of the fabric off all at once. Clint threw him a dirty look as Skye pulled her hands away.

"Sorry." Bruce told him. "You're free though. Four deep lacerations from the Frog-Men of Ottawa. Who knew amphibians could have razor sharp claws?"

Skye moved back a few steps so Bruce could reach the rest of the med kit without working around her. The new angle helped her see the full extent of the Avenger's injury a little better. Four deep gashes ran diagonally starting in the middle of his back on the left and curved down and to the right, with the deepest of them being along his right side. Some of the edges caught only skin, allowing it to hang freely away from the muscle beneath. It was those sensitive spots that caught his shirt the most.

Clint scrubbed a hand threw his hair. "How bad is it?"

Bruce gave a dejected expression to Skye, but said, "Well, you have had worse."

"I hate when you say that."

"It's the truth. Remember that time in Bali when you got shot?"

"The one where you almost decided to remove my spleen in the field, or the one where I got shot in the lung and almost died?"

Bruce smiled. "Both."

"Get out. I'm taking a shower."

The humorous mood returned like a wave. Bruce gathered up his instruments and set the lot of them in the sink while Clint leaned over and checked the temperature of the shower. The heat had eventually kicked in and the subzero temperature found itself slowly being replaced. Bruce adjusted the knob on the cold side to prevent it getting too warm.

"Need help getting out of those clothes?" Bruce asked.

"Not unless you want to be jealous of this body for the rest of your life." Clint quipped back.

"Somehow I doubt I will. It comes with your mouth attached. Shower off. Try not to get any soap in those. I left a bottle of antiseptic by the shampoo. Read the label before you use it. It's diluted already. If it's too painful, then just don't fuss around. I'll use saline to flush it out when you're done anyway." Bruce tapped Skye's arm and indicated the door. It was time to clear out. "Do you need help getting up?"

Clint shook his head. "I'll be all right in a minute."

"Take your time, but that morphine's already starting to ebb off. If you need us, we'll be in the kitchen."

Skye walked out first and waited while Bruce began to pull the door shut behind him. Clint's voice stopped him before the door completely shut.

"Hey, Quaker Oats?"

Skye leaned in.

"Thanks for the distraction."

* * *

Is that not adorable? Seriously, i had no idea of the implication of "_Quake_r Oats" till i looked it up. too funny:)


	4. Chapter 4

**Cabin in the Woods**

**Part 4  
**

Skye sat at the kitchen table while she watched Bruce glide around the kitchen baking, toasting, and frying himself a cardiac attack that could rival anything else made by man or beast. He started with the beers, dejected that they were Millers and not the Heineken he'd requested, and added them to the flower and spices Skye chucked up to being relatively useless. She never expected to be baking a cake or frying fish, so they remained in the far back of the cabinet where she was less likely to be tempted into a culinary creation. In the past that never seemed to work out well.

Bruce, though, worked his way around the kitchen with expertise. It was readily apparent he'd spent his fair share of time in the cabin, like every other Avenger it seemed. He needed no assistance to find the items Skye shied away from like the plague. Such as the measuring cups.

"So, I'm guessing you cook like this a lot." She said.

Bruce bobbed in time with a rhythm cycling around his own mind. "Yup. I was sort of forced into it. When I get to be me again," He turned, talking with the aid of the spatula in his hands. "After the other guy, I have a lot of carbs, fats, and sugars to replace. I used to get really shaky too, but after some testing we realized it was low glucose levels. The team tries to carry a mission pack with us whenever they think I might be a required service. It has a bunch of protein bars, a change of clothes, things like that."

Skye nodded, glancing over her shoulder at the fist imprint in the wall. Bruce must have noticed it too.

"Not sure what set that one off." He said to her, scooping the freshly fried chicken out of the deep frying pan and onto a trio of plates.

"It was you?" she asked, more to keep the conversation going. As Hawkeye rightly pointed out, there were very few things in the world who had the ability to make a depression that big.

"Not me! I don't punch walls. The other guy might. Actually he does." Bruce defended. He dropped the spatulas, dirty pans and other items in the sink before picking up the three stacked plates. Skye thanked him as he set one of them in front of her and arranged the second two. Opening the fridge, he withdrew the other chilled beers and gave one of them to her.

"It's a good thing we kicked Clint's boots and clothes outside. Enough stink in them to turn off even my stomach. And that says something." He pulled out a chair and fell into it. "I can't blame him though. He's been up in these wood for the last three weeks. I didn't get called in until sometime yesterday morning. He was in deep. Real deep."

After he sat, Skye cast a look at the third abandoned chair across from her. "Think he's ok in there?" She asked.

"No." Bruce replied. He picked up his first chicken breast, sliced off a corner and stuffed it into his mouth. It was completely gone in under a minute. "Clint's got a hard head. He's taken more hits and survived things I can't even begin to imagine. Don't ever tell him this, but I actually look up to the guy for his tenacity."

Skye decided that Bruce was a well full of contradictions. As Bruce Banner he was equal parts comedian, doctor, and had the mentality of a therapist. She almost forgot that he was also a genius. He acted little like Fitz or Simmons and seemed content to be perceived as a regular human being. Undoubtedly it was a difficult façade to keep up. Clint Barton, an agent she never gave a second thought too, was sarcastic as Hell, had as many muscles as Captain America, and yet something vulnerable laid dormant under his surface, heavily suppressed by duty.

"If he gets into trouble so often, why doesn't he just wear a suit of armor?" Skye posed.

Bruce finished his second of three chicken legs, drowned down half of his beer, and shrugged. "He does. That leather vest he wears is bullet proof for the most part, but he needs his arm free on some missions. Gives him a better sightline with his bow, he says. I think he just really hates sleeves. It's hard to find shirt for him to wear because of the size of his biceps. The back of his vest isn't bullet proof. The leather would be too thick, and he prefers to have a better body contact with his quiver so he can feel the pressure change when he's low on arrows. Having him exposed like that is a risk, but then again, he has a massive quiver right in that space anyway and it take the brunt of whatever hits him. His leather jacket is bullet proof too. A fancy new Kevlar Tony and I have been cooking up. When he got shot in Bali, it was partially our fault. We thought we got the tensile strength as precise as we wanted, but then someone snipered him with a fifty-caliber mag. We've adjusted since." He drained the last of his beer and set the bottle aside. "Don't tell him I admitted that it was my fault."

Skye shook her head. "I won't."

"Truth is, if Clint didn't come home bleeding for a mission, I'd have him in a CAT scan to find an aneurism or stroke or something like that. It just isn't like him not to get banged up. Now that's not to say it's because he's reckless, because he isn't. He just takes on a lot and he's surrounded by us dimwits who throw cars, and motorcycles, or accidentally just run right over him."

"Did you just call yourself a dimwit?" Clint asked, arriving from the hall. He only had a towel around his waist and nothing else.

Bruce grinned. "Hey,_ I _didn't hit you with a rock."

"I still blame you for the Hulk's actions. I hope you know that. I mean it from the very depths of my heart."

Skye smiled. "I thought you had clothes?"

"I thought you liked me shirtless."

She stuck her tongue out at him and he repeated the gesture right back.

"That's my fault, I forgot to get your clothes from the duffle. I'll go grab them. Take a seat and try to eat something." Bruce pushed out from his empty plate and headed for the door. He'd left the bag outside earlier.

Clint slowly came closer. He held the towel up with one hand and pulled his chair out with the other. He didn't move it more than a few inches before he had to stop. A spasm of pain flooded across his face like a tidal wave. Surprised at his sudden switch in emotion, Skye launched up and went over to move the char herself. Clint had to wait out the hard pain before he could attempt to sit down.

"Can I get something?" She asked.

He shook his head a little but apparently regretted it. When he did find the ability to speak, it was hardly even a whisper. "Med kit. Bathroom. Gonna need it."

Skye rushed away to get it and got back as fast as she could. Clint had lowered himself down onto the chair by the time she came back. Bruce was crouched in front of him with the duffle bag of spare clothes splayed out beside him. She set her things down on the table by Clint's untouched food.

"I think I'll step out for a sec if you guys are going to play dress up." Skye said, stuffing her hair behind one ear uncomfortably. She slipped up the hallway again and waited for the two to finish. Helping Melinda May into her clothes had never once happened in the course of their partnership. Ward? Never. She doubt Gemma and Fitz had ever seen each other without ties or lab coats. Barton and Dr. Banner didn't even know each other two and a half years before the Avengers were created. It was amazing to think that in such a short period of time they trusted each other with those raw realities. It only took them a few minutes to invite her back.

Clint sat sideways on the chair so his slashed up back was exposed for Bruce to see. It was bleeding again since he'd gotten out of the shower. He had the towel wrapped around his waist like a spare tire to prevent it from staining his pants.

"Whaddya think, Quaker?" Clint asked, propping his elbow on the table and his head in his hand.

She lifted her hand and wobbled it from side to side. "I don't want to be you."

"Funny, that makes two of us." He replied. "Do me a favor, my jacket pocket has a cell phone in it. I wasn't going to call up our evac until Bruce arrived. Can you hit Tony's number and let him know where we are?"

"I thought we were driving out?" Bruce asked. He had laid out a surgical pack, some sterile scrubs, and a few packets of suture material. Skye wasn't sure where he'd found it all.

"We were till I hit a spike strip. Truck's got two flat tires."

"You hiked here?!"

Clint nodded. "All four miles."

Bruce looked at Skye. "Please, God, call Tony. I am not hiking four miles."

She smiled and lifted his jacket off the back of the chair. It was surprisingly heavy, most likely from the bullet proof fabric Bruce was telling her about. It was no wonder Clint preferred to wear it less frequently than his other gear. She tried three of the eight or more pockets, and survived countless stabbings by stray arrowheads, but finally came up with the cell phone. Giving it a wry look, she turned the cell toward him. "A flip phone? Do you even live in this century?"

"I don't judge your lack of proper cereal flavors and the fact that your shampoo has Sponge Bob on it." Clint fired back. After letting the statement settle he shrugged. "That's a lie, actually. I totally judge you for that."

"You used my shampoo didn't you?"

"It made my hair feel Coral-reef fresh."

"Do you ever not have a comeback?"

"No." Bruce answered before Clint could. "In fact, he always has a comeback. Annoying ones, trivial ones, and those that only make him laugh, though none of us understand why." He picked up a bottle of clear liquid and found a syringe in the med kit. "Skye, I suggest you make that call outside. I have to numb our favorite idiot here and while Lidocaine feels great after a minute, spraying it in a wound is like setting it on fire at first. Clint needs me to stitch this up before it gets any older and can't be closed."

Skye dropped an anxious look onto Barton's face. She found an ounce of comfort there, aimed her way.

"It's all right, kid. I've been through the ringer before. You just call Tony. Tell him we're at the Ontario Cabin. He knows where to find us. Let him know that it isn't urgent."

"Not urgent? You're intestines might as well be falling out of your back. You need to get to an actual hospital now!" She exclaimed.

"Urgent means that the Hulk is flattening a town, or that I'm almost dead. Not urgent means to come swiftly, but he can still stop and save the world along the way if he has to. Trust me, this isn't urgent." His sharp blue eyes zeroed in on her, conveying his lack of concern. She didn't think he'd be able to convince her, but in some ways he did just that.

"You're reminding me of Ward. Stop it." She warned him, and headed out to the front porch with the cell phone in hand.

* * *

:(:):(:):

* * *

"_You aren't Hawkeye. How did you get his phone? Who are you? Is he dead? Where's Bruce? Is he actually the Hulk? I'm tracing your signal now, so don't move." _

No sooner had Skye hit send on her call to Tony Stark (and maybe she did secretly write the number on her hand) then the third Avenger she'd conversed with that day completely freaked out. He asked her more questions in two minutes than she had answers for and gave her zero chance to speak even the simplest replied. When she finally did manage to get a word in edge wise it was only after he traced her signal and proudly declared her coordinates in both longitude and latitude.

Skye folded her arms. "Are you done?" she asked.

"_Lady, I haven't even started." _He boldly declared. _"Your came is Skye, you work with Coulson, and you have an illustrious history with some online hacker groups which you thought deleted all of your previous history, but you would be wrong. Because I backed up a two year old version of the Internet."_

Skye's arms remained folded. "You backed up the internet. The whole internet."

"_Why do people think that's strange? Now I'm asking you again before I send an Asgardian with a bad attitude and Spartan underwear to your exact location, where is Hawkeye?"_

"He showed up a couple hours ago. He said he ran over a spike strip with his truck and he wanted me to call you with a—" Skye's voice fell away as a guttural scream erupted from inside the cabin. Her entire body froze, then slowly began to vibrate. Barton screamed again.

"_Is that him?" _Stark asked in cold despondence.

Skye didn't want to break Clint's twelve-year-old cell phone, so she moved away from the porch and off toward the lake. The seismic forced followed along with her, but the farther she got from the main building, the less it interfered with Banner's doctoring. Clint's agony-filled cries died away.

"He told me to tell you it wasn't urgent." Skye said, but even her vocal cords were trembling.

"_I can hear the general sense that you don't agree." _

"By his definition of what urgent means, I guess he's right."

Tony was quiet on the other side of the line. After some careful consideration he said, _"I'm in Wales. Thor really is the closest. I'm going to ask him to drop by. Should show up within the next two or three hours. Are there any specific supplies you need right away?"_

At first, Skye was going to say no, but then a small thought popped into her head. "Yeah, actually, there are a couple things."

* * *

:(:):(:):

* * *

With the dropping of the sun beneath the distant horizon, the temperature fell by ten degree increments within the first hour. The air took in a sweet, crisp scent as the wind sweeping off the northern mountain range dragged a looming cold front along with it. Skye wasn't surprised when she saw the first few flakes of snow dance toward the chilling ground. The clouds themselves were sporadic at best. A wall of them loomed closer from a brewing storm just east of them, but it was taking its time to come crawling by. For the time being, Skye enjoyed the bathe of moonlight, and the sound of the porch creaking under her swing. It had been nearly twenty minutes since she'd heard anything from the kitchen just a wall away. Either Bruce had given up, or Clint finally reached his limit and passed out on the table.

The front door popped open and Bruce peered out. "Oh, there you are." He said, spotting her. He slipped outside and padded over to the porch swing with a blanket in hand which he held out for her to take. "Getting chilly out here."

"Snowing too."

"Really?" He glanced up at the porch light and remarked at the large flakes making their journey from sky to earth. "Hey, look at that. Colder than I thought."

Feeling that he might want to sit, Skye moved herself upright. She unfolded the blanket to wrap around her legs. The temperature drop almost chased her inside not long ago, but fear of watching what Bruce had to do, and what was causing Clint to scream, kept her out. Bruce took the seat she offered and settled down on the bench beside her.

"Skye, I'm sorry you had to hear that. I'm sure it wasn't easy for you. Hawkeye's a professional, though. He's been down this road before and I promise you he's all right. I just got him to lay down for a while. He wanted to come out and tell you himself, but I talked him out of it." He said quietly. His legs were longer than hers, allowing him to continue to keep the swing moving back and forth in time with his feet.

"I called Mr. Stark like he wanted. He's sending Thor. Said it might take a few hours for him to get here."

Bruce nodded. "All right."

"I told him it wasn't urgent."

"Good."

"He was in Wales. Didn't say why he was in Wales, just that he was there and he was sending Thor instead. I guess that's not really strange for you guys. It should be weird. I shouldn't be calling Tony Stark on his cell phone and updating him on anything. That's not how my life works! That's not how any of this works!" Skye stood off the bench. Bruce reached out a hand to stop her, but changed his mind at the last minute. She needed to get something off her chest and by God she was going to say it to someone. "I'm dangerous! I told him that the minute he walked in the door and he didn't even care! He didn't even want me to explain why! He could have died on that chair before you ever showed up because I didn't know what to do! I never know what to do anymore. This is like getting stuck in purgatory, just waiting out here all alone for what? For nothing!"

The bench began to shake with the wells of coming rage brewing beneath her skin. Next the trees began to sway and the glass panes vibrated. If they weren't lucky, and she failed to calm down, Clint just might have to drive some new windows up to the cabin the next time they came out.

Bruce stayed patient, though, letting her vent all of that rage, hurt, and abandonment she felt. There was no Coulson, May, Ward, or even her father to direct it all to. There was only the poor Bruce Banner stuck in her firing line. Skye felt like she could simply explode. That was when he finally decided to stand. Bruce cruised up behind her, guided her down the porch to face the tree line and stepped back again. He flourished his hand in the direction of the lake.

"Go on." He said.

Skye looked at the trees, then back at him. "What?"

If she'd been speaking to Clint, the man would have rolled his eyes and groaned. Bruce, though, was more patient. He approached again and picked up one of her hands by the compressed glove that Simmons designed for her. He shook it a little. "This, while incredibly ingenious, is not helping matters. I should know. Dampening your energy, suppressing those feelings, and thinking that the harder you shove, the better you, and everyone around you, are going to be is not the way to handle whatever it is you are dealing with. I don't know what you can do, and how you can do it, but Clint is right. We don't really care. None of that matters. What matters is control. Suppression is not control. Clint was controlled by Loki's staff during the battle of New York. It was willing, symbiotic, and everything he did, he did because something in his brain told him he liked it. Suppression is slavery. How many slaves want to stay slaves and don't want to bust loose ever?"

Skye never looked at her powers like that before. "I don't know."

"I don't know either, because I never was one. So instead, relate your strength to a sexually frustrated teenager. Imagine having all the hormones in the world and being ready and raring to go, then waking up one day to find out that you are the last human being on the planet."

She nodded a little. That was something, unfortunately, she _could_ understand.

Bruce swept his hand over the tree line again. "So, sexually frustrated teens need to release that energy somewhere. So, just do it. Stop holding back, stop worrying about getting people hurt, this is the one place in all the world that you can completely decimate the entire landscape and still be safe." He hiked a thumb over his shoulder. "If that stupid, little, metal lined cabin can survive me staying here for four months straight then there isn't a thing you can do to take it down. So stop holding it all in. Just let it out. You aren't going to hurt me."

Skye looked at the trees again. Now that she saw them the way he did, there was a peculiarity about the place. Entire tracks of the land were full of new growth. Some stretched on for miles in a single direction before cutting a zig-zag path all of its own. She thought they must have been old logging routes or something else distinctly Canadian but she was wrong. They were the paths of a rampaging Hulk. Bruce stepped behind her again, offering gentle encouragements for her to go ahead and let it all out.

Then the dam broke.

One minute Skye felt like her new-normal self and the next she was ripping off her gloves like at any moment she might break into a strip tease. She didn't know why she threw her hands away from her as if a Super Saiyan attack might come bursting out of them, but it just felt natural. It also felt good. She never blacked out. Didn't wake up without a memory of what she'd done. Skye simply let it all out the way Bruce told her to do. The world rumbled under her feat. Her heart thumbed in time with the seismic waves and all at once chaos turned into a feature of her own creation. The forest exploded in a single arc directly in front of her for a good eight hundred feet before the splinter shards collided with the sizzling electric fence. When the world stopped shaking, so did she.

"Whoops." Bruce said, coming up beside her. He raised his arm over his head and waved at the only form left standing in the entire wood. It was Thor.

"Oh my God! I'm so sorry!" Skye exclaimed. She rushed forward over the utter desolation with Bruce slowly strolling up behind her.

Thor set Mjolnir on the ground while he dusted off his cape and armor with one hand. "Ah, someone is pleased to see me. Here I had considered my presence an unwelcome one." He looked up and smiled at Skye. "Did you happen to form this—" he indicated everything that no longer stood around them.

Embarrassed beyond reason, Skye couldn't move.

"Hi Thor." Bruce greeted. He set his hand on Skye's shoulder. "This is Skye. She's staying at the cabin. Clint's inside. What did you bring?"

Thor's face lit up in excitement. "Ah! A great troth, I do assure. And all that was required of me." He set his bag down and extracted two items. One was a large cardboard container of steal cut Quaker Oats, the other was a case of coca cola.

Bruce smiled in Skye's direction. "You know, that's exactly what we were looking for. Do me a favor, and never tell me what you did to pay for them."

* * *

:(:):(:):

* * *

"I do not understand the point of this texture and how it has formed from a solid to a liquid. Is this mush actually a desired delicacy in this realm?"

"The guy on the package made it up over a hundred years ago and we're still eating it. So, yeah, it's pretty popular."

"I do not find its overwhelming appeal. Perhaps this lack of taste is the reason why humans have resorted to soaking everything in gazpacho."

"Sriracha, but close." Bruce hiked his feet up on the couch and laid back with his head propped on a cushion. He took another shovel full of oatmeal and spooned it down. Thor abandoned his and instead finished off Clint's untouched chicken dinner.

Skye sat in front of the fire in the arm chair Clint had dragged over. It was surprisingly comfortable, and she agreed with its far superior location here rather than in front of the window where the draft made her cold. She shoveled another load of sugared Quaker oats into her mouth and sat munching it silently, thinking about what she'd just done to the woodlands outside the front door. While preparing everyone the stove-top snack, Bruce talked to her a little more about that difference between suppression and control. Coming from a guy like him, a lot of the ideals made sense. He'd spent a lot of time alone in that cabin trying to figure out what sort of man he was, and what kind he wanted to be. He contemplated a lot of those same things that she had. Failure, disappointment, danger, even suicide, something she hadn't even admitted openly to herself, he struggled with just as much as she did now. It wasn't her power's decision what kind of woman she was going to grow up and be, it was hers. Coming from the guy that shared a body with the Hulk, the words struck a considerable cord. Thor too seemed supportive as he listened to their talk about duty and consequence. He was a surprisingly good listener. Bruce had to take her side, though, in convincing him not to let Skye and the thunderer have a "bout" on the front lawn. Neither thought she was ready for that level game just yet. From where she was only hours ago, to right now, sitting in a ring of two Avengers, sharing Quaker Oats in front of a fire, was a considerable achievement.

She knew they had to leave in the next few hours. Thor was only the first wave. Steve Rogers, _the_ Captain America himself, was coming in on the Avenger's private quinjet with Natasha Romanov, Black Widow extraordinaire, to pick up the team. She knew they had to go. Clint did need real medical attention after all, but that didn't mean she wasn't the least bit disappointed.

A silent pad of footsteps cruised up the little hallway toward them. Clint appeared, shirtless still but for the pinkish ace bandaged wrapped around his chest like a mummy. He yawned, scratching a hand through his hair. "Thor? Thought I heard you come in."

Skye vacated the leather chair and moved around the coffee table to sit beside Bruce instead. Clint limped his way toward the seat. His hand rested on her head for a moment to ruffle her loose hair.

"I smelled oatmeal. Is that a coincidence?" He grinned. He gently lowered himself down onto the chair, taking care not to bend too much of his back. The morphine had worn off nearly an hour before and most of the lidocaine, too, ebbed away.

"It was a requested addition to my presence here and yet I cannot grasp why one would partake such frippery when meat such as bacon exists in this world."

Clint picked up Thor's bowl and blew down the steam on a spoonful. "I think it exists only for me to hear you use the word 'frippery'."

"I have succeeded in finishing the letter E in the book you have bequeathed me and am seeking to expand my vernacular."

Clint swallowed the first load and dove in for seconds. "I told you. If you want to sound more like Tony, just watch reality television."

"Oh!" Skye suddenly exclaimed, shooting to her feet. She startled Clint, who nearly tossed his spoon into the air. He winced and held an arm against the deep cuts along his right side.

"Don't startle me! Geez, if this wasn't a spoon, I would have stabbed you in the neck. Didn't Cookies ever teach you that?" Clint asked. He set his bowl down in his lap and rubbed a hand across his chest to slow down his heart rate.

"She did, but I don't listen very well." Skye replied. She pulled open the fridge door, extracted one of the cans from within, and waltzed back over with it. Triumphantly, she set it down on the table.

Clint closed his eyes, screwed them tight, and then popped them back open as if expecting the can to dematerialize. When it persisted to exist, he locked eyes with Skye. "Seriously?"

Skye nodded proudly and sat down again.

"Quaker Oats, I think you might be my second favorite girl."

"Who's your first favorite girl?"

Clint picked up the can, tapped the lid a few times out of habit, and popped the top. "Goldie Hawn."

Bruce laughed so hard, he lost his mouthful of oatmeal. Skye giggled beside him, shaking her head. Clint Barton was a character all right. Not even a near death experience or two hours of suturing torture could destroy that happy attitude of his. He tried to join in on the fun but only managed a grimace. He held his side in sad despondence. Laughing was strictly off limits for the next couple weeks.

"Just do me a favor when you leave, ok?" Clint said, sipping his coke with utter adoration.

"Hmm?"

"Fix my wall and plant a tree." He pointed at Bruce. "That guy didn't plant a single tree after he tore them all up."

"What?!" Bruce exclaimed. "I did so! It's right on the other side of the house. I named it Alfy."

Clint shook his head and his hand at the same time. "No, no, no, Steve planted Alfy when he de-thawed. You said you were going to throw some seed out but that didn't happen."

"I seriously think I'm the one that planted Alfy." Bruce declared.

Thor glanced across the coffee table at Skye. "They name their trees. I have not yet understood the reason why."

"Because Alfy is going to be our Charlie Brown Christmas tree in a couple years." Clint said. "He just needs a little TLC and like, forty thousand more pine needles. And the fact that he's actually a pineapple tree doesn't mean he has no chance of life up here."

"You planted a pineapple tree in Canada?" Skye asked, shaking her head.

"Don't look at me, spangly pajamas did that. Maybe its feng shui. I don't know. Hey, Thor, hit the T.V. let's watch some stupid late night stuff. I think Jimmy Fallon's on."

"Television?!" Skye exclaimed.

"Ah, I love that fellow and his singing, voiceless battle of rap!" Thor said, vaulting from the couch. He found the remote sitting on the computer table already and picked it up. He handed it over to Clint who, with a few intricate button combinations transformed the mantel of the fireplace into a flat screen television. Skye watched it all like she was witnessing James Bond and his tricked out crash pad go into action.

Barton finally looked at her when he could no longer stand the heat of her eyes boring into the side of his skull. "What?"

"You have a flat screen hidden in your fireplace and you can't even install a water heater?"

He shrugged one shoulder more stiffly than he had before. "You're just jealous 'cause you didn't know it was there. We haven't even pulled out the Wii I stuffed into the couch cushions."


	5. Epilogue

**Cabin in the Woods**

**EPILOGUE  
**

"Frog Men of Ottawa? Clint, are you entirely serious with me, because if you're not, I'd like to hear about it from you."

"Nope. That's the breaks, boss. I was attacked by the Fog Men of Ottawa. Might wanna make like a false news report about that or something. You know, in case she gets curious."

Phil Coulson buried his head in his hand for a moment. Even over the remote communication system, Clint could tell the man was equal parts laughing, and horrified. Sure, Clint might have come up with a better story than that when he just "happened" to stumble across his old Canadian hangout, but he felt like Skye deserved a little more action in her life. Especially after seeing the extreme fear she was currently living in. In a phrase, Clint felt sorry for her.

He didn't get a chance to call Phil up about her case until that next afternoon when the rest of the team showed and Melinda appeared for a shift change. Dutiful to her word, Skye did indeed call her FTO Cookies, to which May punched Clint right in the kidney for. She never thought that him referring to her as "Fortune Cookie" was very endearing. In his mind, the moment of pain was worth the hilarity of it.

"You were right, sir. She's a good kind. Got a nice head on her shoulders. I think she'd do well. I wish I hadn't gotten myself almost mauled to death by a bear to find that out, but I'm sort of ok with that."

Coulson continued to shake his head. At least he was meeting Clint eye-to-eye again. "You know, when I asked if you could go out and talk to her I didn't exactly mean to do it like that. Tell me again what happened."

"Not much to tell, sir. I drove out of route 43 like usual but caught the two flats off the tarmac. I decided to hike my way in and call the others after I got there. Bruce was cool with that idea too. I took the groceries and not even half a mile in this grizzly bear comes out of nowhere cause, I guess, he smelled the food. I didn't have my bow, because I expected to be on vacay, and Bruce went all green on me. Before he got a chance to take out Smokey, I took the good swipe to my back and hit the pay dirt. It was hot out so I just took my jacket of. Which I guess figures. I grabbed what stuff I could and take off with this thing following after me, Hulk grabs the sucker and takes off in the trees with it, and before I know it, I'm on a four mile solo hike to the cabin. I'm happy I brought or mission pack with us, but it's the last time I'm leaving home without my arrows. Vacation or no vacation."

Coulson still couldn't wrap his head around it. He'd placed the courtesy call in to Clint a week ago with hopes that he might convince Hawkeye to pay Skye a visit. While Clint had never actually trained another field agent, he worked closely with potentially volatile people on a daily basis. The fact that he convinced Bruce Banner to meet Skye was such a wonderful turn of events that Coulson wasn't sure exactly how to pay him back for. Skye called Phil up gushing over her opportunity to meet the entire team. She sounded like a new woman, with a new outlook on what her future might bring. That was something Phil had been working so desperately for.

"Well, I'm sorry you ran into such trouble, but I want to thank you again for speaking to her. I think it really made a big impression."

Clint waved his hand dismissively. "Hey, whatever. I owe you like a thousand favors anyway. Just don't call them all in at once. If you ever want to drive Quaker Oats by, I don't think the guys'll mind. I think they actually enjoyed having another double-x chromosome around. And like I said, she's a good kid. Just needs a little confidence. But then again, that's your expertise. Not mine."

"Quaker Oats?" Coulson grinned.

Clint shrugged. "Hey, I can't help it. These things just come to me. She is a little Quake though."

Coulson agreed. "Will check in with you about how things go. And thanks again, Hawkeye."

Clint offered a little salute and signed off.

He sat forward in the jumpseat for the private quinjet and looked out through his side view window at the world cruising by below. His thoughts inevitably drifted back to Skye. They did find some Jimmy Fallon reruns to watch and spent a few hours laughing over thank you cards, the Roots, and tidily winks with celebrities. After that, Bruce decided to bust out the Mario Kart on the Wii and everyone learned Thor's intimate knack for hand-eye coordination. One by one they all ended up fast asleep around the save screen for Family Game night after twelve rounds of Clue and Mousetrap combined.

The next morning was bittersweet. Thor flew to town for his beloved bacon and they fried that alongside the remainder of the eggs. Natasha, Steve, and Tony arrived with Krispee Crème doughnuts and a box of coffee. Within the hour, Melinda May herself strode in. He thought about Skye and about who she might become.

_"You know, I think i like it."_

"_Like what?" Clint asked._

"_Quake." Skye replied. _

_He smiled, ruffled her hair until it spring out of her bobby pins and pony tail, then saluted to May. "Cavalry." _

"_Barton you are an a-" Melinda replied, stony-faced. "But I can't kill you, so I guess I like you."_

Sky was a smart woman, Clint firmly believed. He felt bad that she'd been cooped up at the old cabin with little direction and outside contact, but at the same time he knew the worth in it. He'd spent his first few weeks with SHIELD hanging out in that place beside Phil, learning how to be alive again after the betrayals in his life tore him down from the man he should have always been. After Clint, the place stayed abandoned for a while. It nearly fell into complete disrepair until he lobbied to save it. Fury gave him a single ultimatum. Clint had to fix the place up himself, or give it up entirely. The rest was Avengers history.

Natasha stayed there after she defected from the Black Widow project. Tony spent a week there with Pepper after he came back from the desert. Steve enjoyed a month long retreat when he emerged from the ice. But the longest stay thus far was Bruce Banner. That little cabin taught him how to live again, and how to control that Hulk from within. Of course Clint never wanted to see it rust away. The place seemed to churn out his greatest allies at every turn.

So with Avengers Tower, and home, waiting for them on the next horizon, Clint's thoughts remained on those few hours he spent with the girl known as Skye. He had a good feeling about her, which didn't happen very often but he knew to trust them when they did come. Maybe one day Phil would bring her by their place. For Now he could only think, wonder, and let that old woodland cabin work its small bit of magic.

* * *

so that's the end!

I hope you enjoyed this little trip outside of my norm. I sure did! Again, please forgive the grammar errors as this was a surprise to my typical editors.

Please review!


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